The term globalization has been accepted very quickly. Until the 1990’s virtually unknown, the word is now on everybody’s lips. The phenomenon of globalization however is much older than the concept. It started at the end of the 15th century with the beginnings of European expansion and was dramatically increased by the industrialization of the world since the late 18th century. Over the last 30 years or so it has accelerated so much that one can speak of a new stage of globalization.

The Academia Europaea had its origin in a proposal that came in 1984 from the UK Department of Education and Science. This led to a Foundation Meeting in Cambridge in September 1988 attended by 54 of the Founding Members. They set up the formal framework and this provided the basis of the first Plenary Meeting held in London in June 1989.

Basic scientific research is largely limited to the West. Original scientific contributions by the rest of the world are extremely limited, though China, South Korea and India are beginning to make their presence felt. This absence of scientific research is largely due to the undeveloped state of scientific culture. To counter this, systematic and rigorous theoretical training of talented minds is crucial. That requires close interaction with the West. The author suggests various ways to do so.

To almost everyone the label ‘NATO and Science’ must mean science in the service of weapons and war. And it is true that NATO members do cooperate on a wide range of defence-related aspects of science and technology. But ‘NATO and Science’ also means something very different. Unknown to many, NATO has a third dimension in addition to the military and political ones, and that is the NATO Science Programme. I represented Norway on the NATO Science Committee from 1992 to 2004. Here, I give an account of the programme, how it came about, how it has been implemented, how it changed after the end of the Cold War, and how it is still changing post 9/11. The NATO Science Programme operates in a very specific political context, and I shall try to highlight some aspects of the complex interplay between science and politics in my account.

Globalization challenges all social systems in all nations – how then could it spare the sciences? A question however is: what is new about this? Has not this happened throughout history? And a further question is: what is special for the sciences in all this? Although globalization may not be a new thing, with a population of over 6 billion people its impact becomes all-pervasive and its consequences are severe. It is not only that science enters into all cultures, whether advanced or less developed. Humans also come to depend on it more and more, and this for better or for worse. Science is literally vital to human beings in that they have come to rely upon it for food, potable water, energy, and security in their environment, or in old age. All people, in ever-increasing numbers, therefore have to be instructed in science so that they become aware of how dependent they are from the continuing progress in science, and to what extent innovation and advantages in economic competition depend upon their abilities to make the best use of science. In fact, science has become so powerful an influence on all ways of life that it can no longer be left to the scientists alone. Their power has to be constrained by morals and by laws, and it becomes inevitable that economists and lawyers, and above all politicians intrude upon what the scientists often regard as their exclusive turf. This may in time be the biggest challenge of the globalization of science.

Launched in 2007, the European Research Council (ERC) aims at pulling out all the stops in supporting ambitious research projects in frontier research by the most talented scientists and scholars. The ERC grants are generous, open to nationals from any country in the world, and subject to one criterion alone: peer-reviewed excellence. We outline the central strategic priorities of the ERC, and briefly describe some impressions from the first two calls.

TOPO-EUROPE is a multidisciplinary international research program that addresses the interaction of processes inherent to the deep Earth (lithosphere, mantle) with surface processes (erosion, climate, sea level), which together shaped the topography of Europe. The objective of the TOPO-EUROPE project is to assess neotectonic deformation rates and to quantify related geo-risks, such as earthquakes, flooding, landslides, rock falls and volcanism. Research, incorporating iterative data interactive modelling, focuses on the lithosphere memory and neotectonics, with special attention on the thermo-mechanical structure of the lithosphere, mechanisms controlling large-scale plate boundary and intraplate deformations, anomalous subsidence and uplift, and links with surface processes and topography evolution. The TOPO-EUROPE natural laboratories, in which these processes are analysed, cover a wide range of geodynamic settings. These include the post-collisional Alpine/Carpathian/Pannonian-Basin system, the very active Aegean-Anatolian and Apennines-Tyrrhenian orogens and back-arc basins, the Caucasus-Levant area in the Arabia-Europe collision zone, the Iberian Peninsula caught up between Alpine orogens, the meta-stable West and Central European Platform, the stable East-European Platform and the seismically active and elevated Scandinavian continental margin. The TOPO-EUROPE project is a component of the International Lithosphere Program and was initiated with the support of Academia Europaea. A European Science Foundation EUROCORES project provides funding for part of the TOPO-EUROPE research. Other parts of TOPO-EUROPE require support by participating organizations.

Permanent dialogue, steered by continual negotiation, was the driving force behind the construction of Post-War Europe. In this context, the countries of the European Union have extended the mandate of the European Commission (EC) to negotiate an increasing number of topics, giving the EC’s high-ranking officials a pre-eminent role of agents in the process. It is, then, urgent and useful to investigate these negotiators’ practices, to list a number of recurrent features, and to compare them with current negotiation theories. In 2004, at the request of the EC, 15 in-depth interviews were conducted with high-ranking EC officials, from different directorates, in charge of top-level negotiations. An interview guide was drawn up to address the five following points:

• • the success factors in negotiation,

• • the reasons for failure,

• • the management of people, relationships, cultural aspects, the mandate, and the stakeholders’ map,

• • the management of substantive issues and their solutions, including the use of justification criteria,

• • the management of the process, agenda, multilateral mechanisms, and communication.

Following the interviews, a report was submitted to the EC’s General Administration Directorate. The report highlights a number of features that may favour the success of European negotiators. In what follows, some keys to success are linked to three dimensions of negotiation: process, people, and problem.

The concept of reparations-payments made for damages inflicted by one individual upon another have long been regarded as appropriate social policy. It has only been in the 20th century that the concept has been broadened to deal with evils committed in earlier generations for which payments have been requested, the most discussed of these being the request for reparations for today’s blacks for suffering attributable to slavery that ended over one hundred years ago. Other examples include payments by Germany and other European nations for crimes committed in the Second World War. Starting about 1990, there have been frequent apologies for past and present crimes, which acknowledge wrongs committed but without any financial payment. Many nations, churches, and private groups have recently made such apologies, which have seemed to come politically acceptable.

For centuries, major European states were involved in the Atlantic slave trade and in slavery in their colonies in the Americas. In the last decade, this subject has attracted serious but uneven attention in Europe beyond the realms of descendants and academia. The British, French and Dutch governments have engaged with the subject, expressing remorse and stimulating public commemorations. Portugal and Spain on the other hand have hardly addressed the subject. The reason for this remarkable divergence, the author suggests, lies with divergent commemorative traditions and the fact that the two Iberian countries have no substantial Caribbean communities as visible reminders of this past. The last part of the article discusses some problems associated with the politicized rediscovery of these embarrassing chapters in European history.